from the well,-look-at-that dept

You may recall a little over a week ago we wrote about the Wisconsin county that magically found 14,000 votes in a recent (highly contested) election, after the very partisan County Clerk -- who had just been questioned for questionable methods of collecting election data -- said that she had "failed to save the results" in her original report. While this followup story is now about a week old, someone just sent it over to us. Apparently that particular county, Waukesha County, has a rather stunning history of voting irregularities, including having an astounding and totally unprecedented 97.63% voter turnout rate in 2004:

Apparently in 2004 the polls in Waukesha were teeming with voters as the Waukesha County Clerk's office showed a 97.63% turn out. No, that's not a typo. 97.63%

Of the 236,642 registered voters in Waukesha on Nov 2, 2004 apparently 231,031 of them came out in a hint of rain and drizzle and did their civic duty.

Just to put this in perspective, Australia has compulsory (mandatory) voting and their turnout is 95%.

And it's not just voter turnout that's suspiciously high. Voter registrations are unprecedented as well:

In the 8 months leading into the 2004 Presidential Election there was a marginal 1.3% increase in the rolls netting about 3000 additional new voters. However in the 3 months after the election, which showed an anomalous 97.63% turn out, suddenly the rolls surged to the tune of almost 50,000 new voters and upped the rolls 20%. I suppose that's one way to even out a suspiciously high turn out.

Furthermore, remember that first number I told you to hang on to? The 283,820 eligible voters in the county of Waukesha in July of 2004? This new surge in the voter rolls has now pushed total voter registration in Waukesha County to 99.5% of elegible voters being registered to vote by February of 2005.

99.5% of eligible voters registered? Wow.

But, let's not stop there. The blogger who did this research also dug up the official election results data from the 2006 election in Waukesha County, and noticed that some of the elections appeared to have more votes than ballots were cast by a fairly large number:

In the race for Governor/Lieutenant Governor there were a total of 176,112 votes cast. For Attorney General there were a total of 174,047 votes cast. And for Secretary of State there were a total 170,440 votes cast.

So, look at the 3rd line of the top of that report...Total Ballots Cast: 156,804. So based on those numbers 20,000 extra votes were cast in the election that weren't actually accounted for in the ballots cast.

To say the least, these numbers are pretty troubling if you believe in the integrity of democratic elections.